Books shelved under “Culture”

Some books are plodding and predictable (even if they are ultimately rewarding). Others are byzantine and meandering (even if they are ultimately rewarding). The Message is a secret, third type: it is a careful bundle of missives about the struggle for liberation. Writing about events and stories across space and time, Ta-Nehisi Coates unifies these long essays under the guise of talking to his workshop students about writing. The title belies its simplicity by taking…

Wait, this book isn’t by Naomi Wolf? Why did I even bother … jk. Although, ironically, I haven’t read anything by Naomi Klein previously, and I’ve read two books by Naomi Wolf (more on that in a bit). I don’t think I personally have conflated the two Naomis myself, but I’m sure that’s just the lack of opportunity. Doppelganger intrigued me because I wanted to hear about Klein’s deep dive into the world in which…

Women are some kind of magic, to quote amanda lovelace, so it’s no wonder the patriarchy thinks we’re witches. The metaphor (and, for parts of history, literal belief) of woman-as-witch is a potent one. In Defense of Witches seeks to connect contemporary feminist struggles with the legacy of the witch hunts and trials that ran through Europe and America. Mona Chollet, translated here by Sophie R. Lewis, looks at a number of themes, like beauty…

We have all heard the tired refrain “boys will be boys.” Challenging this adage has been one of the main undertakings of feminism in the past half-century. Yet how successful have we been in dismantling rape culture and teaching consent? More broadly, what messages do boys and young men receive about sex and sexuality, and how is that influencing their behaviour as they navigate their first intimate relationships? In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein…

Embodiment is so strange. We all have bodies, but we don’t all have the same body. Some bodies are judged more than others. In “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon debunks twenty prevalent anti-fatness myths. Anti-fat bias is consistently the only form of discrimination that has increased over the past decades (other types have decreased or stayed roughly the same), and sometimes it is so…

This book has been on my to-read list for ages. People keep recommending it to me (shout out to Meagan in particular). In true Kara fashion, I bought Wordslut and then allowed it to languish on my physical to-read shelf for … I don’t know, years? Meanwhile, I listened religiously (pun intended) to the Sounds Like a Cult podcast that Amanda Montell cohosted. The time has come, however, to talk about language from a…

In The Only Woman in the Room, Eileen Pollack shares her story of eagerly matriculating into physics at Yale, completing her degree, and then dropping out of science in favour of an eventual career as a writer and professor of English—ironically, what her parents initially advised her to do. Pollack connects challenges she faced, primarily during her time at Yale, to the larger systemic issue of the leaky pipeline in science and why more…

Amid the calumnious pushback in the United States against so-called “critical race theory” (it’s not) in schools remains the single truth: you don’t learn the true history of the US in school. The same goes for Canada, where we learn about the enslavement of African people in the US, but we don’t learn about slavery in Canada or our own history of anti-Black racism following abolition. So I do my best to read and learn,…

When you really think about it, the idea of gender is such a fraught concept. How can we ever really know our gender? What even is gender, anyway? It shouldn’t be surprising I have spent a great deal of time in recent years thinking about this, yet I don’t know that I am any closer to an answer. So I was very intrigued by Gender Without Identity, by Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini. This…

Bodies are complicated. In addition to the indignity of merely having one, the way it constantly needs maintenance and has such a limited warranty, bodies are one of the primary ways we interact with our world. And our world is racist. It’s Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women’s Bodies is Jessica Wilson’s attempt to sort through how anti-Black racism permeates diet culture and eating-disorder treatment when it comes to Black women. I…

Thunder Bay is not the most diverse place, demographically, in Canada, but that has been changing. For various reasons, more immigrants have been arriving here in recent years from a wider array of countries. This includes many Muslim immigrants, as well as people from MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa) countries. Not only do these newcomers often face challenges with language, but my city can be a racist place. So I was intrigued by Broken:…

It feels like I have had this Massey Lectures book forever, always next on the to-read list, always another nonfiction book slipping in and taking its place but finally, finally I’ve sat down and given Esi Edugyan the time she deserves here. Out of the Sun is a great example of what the Massey Lectures can be: give someone the platform to talk about whatever they want, basically, but in a way that is…

First off, shout-out to this book for no subtitle! That’s rare for a work of nonfiction—not that I have any great hatred of subtitles, but the absence of one here is notable. Anyway. Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet caught my eye because the history of computing, intertwined as it is with the history of mathematics and the history of feminism, interests me a lot. Ted Striphas discusses how we conceptualized both the word algorithm and…

Another in the slate of ace-focused books released recently by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, who through NetGalley provided me with an eARC that I am finally getting around to reviewing! Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks on Existing in an Allo World by Michele Kirichanskaya is a kind of how-to guide for being asexual in a world that privileges sexual attraction and desire. It’s not prescriptive (as Kirichanskaya notes, there is no one right way to be…

One of my responsibilities as an English teacher is to help my students build their media literacy skills. In the past couple of years, I have become increasingly convinced, in fact, that media literacy is the most essential skill English classes can cover. The deluge of disinformation and morass of misinformation out there is staggering. Throw in the challenges of deepfakes, and, well, it’s starting to get depressing, how difficult it is to evaluate the…

Despite loving podcasts, I have never listened to Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca’s podcast of the same name. Nevertheless, I was drawn to Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else because, hey, asexual and aromantic over here! It feels very fitting that I’m writing this review at the end of Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. Thanks to Jessica Kingsley Publishers and NetGalley for the eARC.

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Even though I don’t have TikTok, some of the best content always escapes that platform to find its way to me. Such is the case with Cody Daigle-Orians, purveyor of Ace Dad Advice. I remember watching some of his videos and thinking exactly some of the sentiments he shares later in I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life, such as “it’s so nice to see an elder ace!” Lol, we’re so…

This is a great example of a book I probably wouldn’t have picked up solely on my own recognizance. However, it’s the January pick for the Rad Roopa Book Club, and I was intrigued. Well, actually, I wanted to know how to kill a city, should the need ever arise. That’s what P.E. Moskowitz covers in this aptly named book—though I get the feeling they are more interested in fighting against gentrification, and I suppose…

As I’ve noted in other reviews, perhaps most recently Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, being ace (asexual) in our society is no picnic. While I won’t deny there are benefits to opting out of the compulsory sexuality of our society, the fact that we must, indeed, opt out is problematic. In particular, I think that many a-spec people have a hard time figuring out their labels—partly because asexuality encompasses a lot of overlapping identities, but also…

This is one of those questions that gets asked of you at a certain time in your life. Sherronda J. Brown introduced me to the term chrononormativity when I read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, and that made a lot of things click for me. So When Are You Having Kids?: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren't Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents is a practical guide for addressing a very…